Saturday, January 27, 2007

"This charged performance infuses jazz, poetry, hip hop, and acoustic music with a Generation X twist. Narrated by artistic director E. Christopher “Cocktails” Cornell, She Speaks features Khalilah Ali, Kelly Love Jones and Renita Walls and forges a new image of women in hip hop. Leaving behind old stereotypes, the performers weave a vibrant, edgy story of contemporary women and the many hats they wear, They’re more than wives, mothers, lovers, providers and friends; that’s why She Speaks."

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Man I feel like I've been away forever... things are crazy here in Zurich... long work days... stressful... then to top it all off... some crazy fat guy at the hotel decides he's gonna yell at me in some other language. There are some really stupid people out there. Oh and the big thing here in the news is about the whole Shilpa Shetty / Big Brother controversy... I swear... it's on ALL the time!

Victory Grill is a historic music venue located at 1104 E. 11th St, Austin, Texas. The nightclub was on the Chitlin' Circuit and hosted famous African-American acts such as Bobby Bland, Gatemouth Brown, W. C. Handy and B. B. King during the age of racial segregation in the United States. Victory Grill was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 16, 1998.

The Roots, also known as The Legendary Roots Crew, The Fifth Dynasty, The Square Roots and The Foundation, are an influential, Grammy winning Philadelphia-based hip hop group, famed for a heavily jazzy sound and live instrumentation. Inspired by the "hip-hop band" concept pioneered by Stetsasonic, the Roots themselves have garnered critical acclaim and influenced later hip-hop and R&B acts.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

I'm really sorry to do this to the "Queen of Soul", but she will take a back seat today... to none other than Steve Jobs and the iPhone. I squirt everytime I think of the iPhone. I mean the thing is amazing... 3.5 inches! 4.8 ounces! 320 by 480 at 160 ppi! touch screen! OS X! 8 GB! GSM! Wi-Fi! Bluetooth! on and on... I need to breathe...

Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American gospel, soul and R&B singer born in Memphis, Tennessee, but raised in Detroit, Michigan. She has been called for many years "The Queen Of Soul", but many also call her "Lady Soul," as well as the more affectionate "Sister Re". She is renowned for her soul and R&B recordings but is also adept at jazz, rock, blues, pop, gospel, and even opera. She is generally regarded as one of the top vocalists ever, due to her ability to inject whatever she may be singing about with passion, soul and sheer conviction. Franklin is the second most honored female singer in Grammy history after Alison Krauss. Ms. Franklin has won nineteen competitive Grammys (including an unprecedented eleven for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, eight of them consecutive), and the state of Michigan has declared her voice to be a wonder.

dead prez are a critically acclaimed underground hip hop duo of alternative rappers stic.man and M-1. They have become known largely for their hard-hitting style and politically active lyrics, focusing on racism, critical pedagogy, activism against governmental hypocrisy, and corporate control over the media, especially hip-hop record labels. dead prez made their stance clear on their first album, declaring on the lead song, "I'm a African" that the group is "somewhere between N.W.A. and P.E.".

In 1990, M-1 headed to Tallahassee to attend FAMU (Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University) where he and stic.man met and connected due to their mutual love of music and knowledge. "I was soaking up the Black Panther Party as a whole," M-1 remembers. "I learned about their lives and it helped mold me."

"I realized there's a struggle already going on and I have to try to help ride it out," interjects stic.man. M-1's quest for insight led him to join the International Democratic People’s Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) in Chicago for three years while stic.man remained behind in Florida and started getting into trouble. Burned out by the arduous labor of Uhuru, M-1 decided it was time to focus on music and stic.man agreed.

Dead prez transcribed the political education they acquired into lyrical poetry. Brand Nubian's Lord Jamar discovered them in New York and helped them sign a deal with Loud Records. But being the new kids of the block on a powerhouse label like Loud (home to the Wu-Tang Clan and Mobb Deep) wasn't easy. dead prez wasn't always Loud's top priority but that didn't stop them from building a fan base around their over-the-top performances (they've been known to ignite dollar bills and toss apples into the audiences, declaring that they must eat healthily).

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

What a day... stressful... I wish I could levitate and meditate... like that fool in the pic. :)

Sol.iLLaquists of Sound seem like come cool cats... never heard of them... but their song "As If We Existed" is really putting me at ease right now.

Ever have that feeling that you were just starting to make some progress towards building something really special and then all of a sudden everything just seems to crumble almost immediately? That's my current state of affairs.

sol·illaquist of sound (soul il kwist uv sah oo nd) n. 1. A play on words describing an individual whose efforts in searching for one's self reveal his/her soul to an audience, often through some type of art medium. 2. One who recognizes his/her self and the reflection of self in those around them see also Swamburger, Alexandra(h), DiViNCi, Tonya Combs, and Charles Wilson III.

It would be an understatement to call the Sol·iLLaquists of Sound a mere Hip-Hop Band. Their message and ambitious fusion of varied stylistic genres continue to reinvent the perceptions and experience of music as a whole. The group consists of four dynamic individuals: Swamburger, Alexandrah, Tonya Combs, and DiViNCi. As they are each talented, focused and motivated enough to hold their own, they prove to be an undeniably ruthless force when working together. Backed by a powerful message of self-awareness, the Sol·iLLaquists combine rapid-fire lyricism, jazz-tinged vocals, insightful poetry, and innovative live electronic performance. It's not a rare occurrence for members of the audience as well as the band to be brought to tears by the level of truth and energy put forth in any one Sol·iLLaquists performance.

Personifying the fierce independence and Do-It-Yourself spirit of the Hip Hop movement, festival producer Chang Weisberg puts everything on the line for his impossible dream of reuniting notorious no-shows The Wu-Tang Clan.

Furiously paced and rich with multiple narratives, "Rock the Bells" follows Weisberg and his guerilla promotion team as they fight for the arrival of all nine Wu-Tang members, battle broken equipment and overwhelmed security, attempt to control the riotous crowd in the overheated, over-crowded venue and deliver the history-making show they have promised.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Funny story... last night in Houston we went to M Bar for NYE. 2am rolls along and the club is closing so game time decision, do we stay for the afterparty or do we go? We decided to just stick around, what else were we going to do? I mean we were plastered. So 2:30am comes around and still no afterparty and lights are bright as day. We start to get hungry so my friend goes out to get some pizza. We're just chillin' at the club and all of a sudden the light dim. I'm looking down from the balcony and I see some decorators start putting down some hula hoops. So curious, I ask if this becomes a gay party after hours and lo and behold the bouncer says yes. Then our friend comes back with the pizza and we spend the start of new years eating pizza at a gay party!

After winning a freestyle battle during Babygrandes showcase at the South by Southwest music festival, undecided sophomore Valin Zamarron signed a single deal with the record label.

In the world of underground hip-hop, beats and rhymes are not just sequenced rhythms they are a way of life.

Subscribing to the philosophy that rap is something you do, hip-hop is something you live, emcees do not define hip-hop strictly as a form of music; rather, it is a form of expression that defines them.